As is well known, the growing consumption of hydrocarbons around the world leads oil companies to look for new fields of development. Hydrocarbon reservoirs are becoming less easy to produce provided that many are usually either offshore, subsea, or in areas where human presence is limited or impossible. Added to the challenge of difficult production, there is an extra expense with produced fluids of less quality, which require proper optimization of the development and production costs.
Overall, the trend of new discoveries is based either on gas production (e.g., high API) or on production of viscous fluid, usually called Heavy Oil, Extra-Heavy Oil, and Bitumen. These fluids can be so viscous that most of the time they cannot flow naturally due to the friction they create against the pipe wall, wherein it is necessary to add diluent or a chemical additive to the fluids so as to lower the viscosity and so as to provide the resulting flow to gathering centers for specific reconditioning and treatment.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that address the above and other problems with background art systems and methods for processing gas and highly viscous fluids.